For convenience and easy reference we list all resource below. This list will consolidate information from later followups.
Unavailable Resources
- GDB, human genome database. was found at http://www.gdb.org, paper about it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC147203/
- GENSAT: The Gene Expression Nervous System Atlas is is one of the first large-scale efforts to look at where specific genes are expressed in the brain and spinal cord. The project is funded by the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). " was found at NCBI, this text from this link at this time: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/genome/probe/doc/ProjGensat.shtml
- BioHealthBase: The BioHealthBase Bioinformatics Resource Center (BRC) (http://www.biohealthbase.org) is a public bioinformatics database and analysis resource for the study of specific biodefense and public health pathogens—Influenza virus, Francisella tularensis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Microsporidia species and ricin toxin. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2238987/?tool=pubmed
Background
A couple of times we've laughed about how hard it is to know if a tool or dataset or some bioinformatics resource has perished. You don't know if the server is down temporarily, if it has relocated but still available, or if it has ceased to be.
Inspired by Jeremy Leipzig's post about how handy it would be to have an obituary section of the NAR database issue,
One solution could be a obituary section to the web server issue, where sites are deemed dead, stale, or merely irrelevant by a panel of experts. Then corresponding authors could then indicate if they abandoned ship because of laziness, guilt, or simply out of spite
I propose that we keep an area here that has information on these resources. At least that way there would be some record that someone tried to trace it, and might save others time.
My proposal is that each suspected/alleged death notice get its own answer, which can be commented/discussed in replies. Maybe we can find some of them still. Or we can get some postings on milk cartons for stuff that's really crucial.
Below there will be a sample entry like I envision. Add your own if you have some.
Hi Mary,
yes, this is a good idea ... maybe Michelle Brazas and I should include some of these thoughts in our commentary in this year's web server issue?
Wow, that would be great. I've spent days tracking data or tools that I wanted to examine again. It might also help us to understand what happens to cause this. Funding? Grad student who ran it left? Superseded by other tools?
Great idea Mary, I missed this originally. Interesting concept.
I think it's necessary. I need a place to store this--it happens to us a lot that we go looking for something, or someone asks us about it. So it's possibly self-serving, but might as well save others time later if I have the info. It will at least be google-able this way.
we should edit and add/update the new entries to the original post in a designated section so that one does not need to read the entire thread to find all the names.
Ranking by vote score won't be ideal, quite so. But I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Feel free to edit or add an entry or something to illustrate.
Reorganized the main post a bit, the listing is now at the top.
Ah, I see. Ok--I'll try to curate it when I notice new entries, but others should also feel free to edit if they have something to add that I haven't got to yet.
This is definitely a good thing and I hope it will become both widely used and well-known. So far we have two databases but I hope people will also post about software.